>I like it, if for no other reason than that it will likely reduce the >impact >of what I se as one of the most troublesome rules in D20: Take 20. Let me start off by saying that I agree with you about how frustrating the Take 20 rule can be. While I agree with WOTC that the rule is realistic (why COULDN'T someone just keep rolling to open a lock until they rolled a 20? - this just avoids all that rolling) I just don't like how it makes everything automatically successful or failed, depending on the DC and PC's skill rank. I have, along with one of my math-geek - every group should have one, very useful! - players, devised a rule that gives SOME chance of failure, no matter how slim, based on the optional rule that a 1 always means failure. We've a table that breaks down the chances of rolling a success (based on the DC) before rolling a 1 into a single d20 roll, used whenever a PC wants to "Take 20" and the DM wants SOME chance of failure. If you want to know more about it or see the table, e-mail me directly, be glad to share. >With this rule, anyone who wants can succeed at easy or even moderate >difficulty tasks without having to have any real skill, just by taking some The key here is "easy or moderate" although I'd even argue this should be just "easy" in most cases. Remember, in order for a rank 0 or 1 PC to succeed on a Take20 roll, the DC has to be no more than 20 or 21 respectively. If you look at alot of the DC's, that's actually fairly low (at least on the important ones, like pick locks, search, disable traps, etc.) I think most things that have a usual DC of 20 or lower are usually not very significant tasks in your average D&D campaign. Conversely, the party that has no one with ranks in the skills I mentioned will likely get frustrated very quickly as they miss all the nasty traps, are unable to get through the tougher doors or open the better chests, or what have you. What frustrates ME is the skilled PC's with ranks between 5-10 in a skill who can always automatically succeed at even the tougher DC's of 25-30, hence my above solution. >extra time. Thus, there is little reason to take any significant non-combat >skills: in a pinch, a Fighter with Rank 1 (Rank 0, if the skill may be used >untrained) can replace the character who specialized in the same skill. And >it's not like, "Gee, can I ever do as well as he would?" It's, "Ho-hum, we >have time, so I'll just Take 20 and succeed." Meanwhile, there's no >equivalent of Take 20 for combat: "Yeah, I know I have a +0 Attack >Modifier. >So I'll take 20, and slice him open!" A good GM will watch over Take Well, don't forget, while there's no Take 20 for combat, there's also no Take 20 for anything where each round matters, or there's a consequence for failure. Or in other words, you COULD, if you wanted, take 20 in combat, but that would mean your opponent gets to swing at you TWENTY times followed by you (hopefully) hitting him ONCE since you get to add 20 to your attack score for that 20th round. So, any situation where something (presumably) bad can happen every round, a PC isn't likely to Take 20 on a roll. So comparing it to combat isn't really fair. 20 VERY >carefully, and introduce all sorts of complications for Heroes who abuse it This I agree with completely. >(AND scrupulously enforce the "20 times the standard time" rule, rather >than >just saying "two minutes"); but BOY, is it prone to abuse! True, although it seems anytime the DM's likely to care, 20 times the standard duration IS 2 minutes (most "adventuring actions" only take a round, 6 seconds) >But with your system, the difference between a skilled and unskilled >character becomes more apparent. Why do I believe this? Because challenging >tasks will have more "Difficulty Points" than you can roll in a single >success. So the time involved in Take 10 and Take 20 will get amplified. It >will become impractical to Take 20 over several rolls: the skilled >character >could probably achieve 10 or more successes while the unskilled character >is >busy with 1. I agree that I like this distinction. I will however have to think longer on this optional rule to whether the addeded annoyance of all those die rolls is worth it or no. I suspect not, for me anyhow. Troy _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
